While we celebrate people with disabilities every day, today is an important time to reflect on our work, acknowledge our allies and raise up our advocates within the community, and use the media attention from today to broadcast those messages we all fight daily to be heard. IDPwD gives us an opportunity to highlight the value of an inclusive and accessible world, and what it provides to both the consumer and the businesses.

This year’s theme, announced by the UN in October, is “Transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in fuelling an accessible and equitable world“.

Put simply? We see this as using innovating ideas to provide solutions in making the world accessible and inclusive for all.

GetAboutAble, founded on the mission to make travel and tourism accessible and inclusive for everybody, strongly believes in the idea that travel is an important part of life and everyone should be able to enjoy exploring the world around them.

Statistics show that 1 in 5 people are recognised as having a disability, which means for every 5 people you know, 1 person is underrepresented, undervalued and presented with a world that is not built for them.

How does GetAboutAble resonate with this year’s theme?

As we head into 2023, GetAboutAble is preparing to host our third year of the Accessible & Inclusive Tourism Conference in the Asia-Pacific. Over the last two years of the conference, we have seen many innovations presented which are transforming the accessibility and inclusiveness of tourism, including design like Hotel Brooklyn, interpretation and translation through ILA, sensory tours like Cocky Guides, apps like Cérge for elevating customer service and wayfinding technology like BindiMaps, Access Keys and mobility mapping.